


You Can't Break That Which Isn't Yours

by orphan_account



Series: The Cipher Twins [6]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Attempted Kidnapping, Blood and Gore, Dark Character, Eye Trauma, Gen, Head Injury, Hive Mind, Hospitalization, Mind Meld, Minor Character Death, Murder, Possessive Behavior, Violence, behold i have finally begun to put plot into this series, i really don't know how to tag this, not in extreme detail but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 07:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2499164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They couldn't really call Wendy a friend, not anymore, couldn't say they loved her, but she was important and she couldn't afford to be lost."<br/>Or, the one where the gnomes have very poor judgment, and Wendy has (a) very possessive demon colleague(s).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, sorry this is a few days late, I thought I was gonna be able to finish it on Saturday, but then we went on vacation so I didn't have a lot of writing time, and my phone (where I was writing this) decided to delete all the files I had on it so I had to start over and am only just now getting it done at 2am my time. :P  
> (Title from Apres Moi, by Regina Spektor)

            _No._ Cipher—as they’d begun to think of themselves the majority of the time—clenched their fists, blue fire creeping up their arms and the color fading from the world as they took in the sight before them. Who did these _insolent_ little gnomes think they were, that they thought they had the right to touch what did not belong to them? To _take_ what did not belong to them?

            “You just made a terrible mistake.” They hissed at the gnomes, some of which were starting to realize what they’d messed with, and some of which weren’t. One of the latter, one Cipher could vaguely remember having dealt with before, stepped forward in front of Wendy ( _ours she’s ours don’t touch her you hurt her you have to pay_ ).

            “Since you, Mabel, wouldn’t be our queen, we’ve decided to take this one instead.” The gnome pronounced proudly, gesturing to Wendy, who lay unconscious on the forest ground. Or, well, the dreamscape ground now, technically. “Except the kidnapping-someone-who’s-awake thing didn’t work so well last time.”

            “That’s why you tried to _kill_ her?” They demanded, the flames flickering higher with every step they took closer to the gnomes.

“N-not kill her, just…” The lead gnome trailed off, taking a worried step back, along with many of his colleagues. A little under half of the creatures were now retreating, while a good number more looked like their eyes were about to get wide enough to leave their skulls.

 _Hey, that was a good idea; we should try that sometime instead of taking teeth. That could be a lot more fun. In fact…_ they raised one hand and gestured for the eyes, collecting about nine pairs before the remaining gnomes turned and fled, while the eyeless ones screamed out of panic. (Not out of pain, unfortunately, despite their best efforts nothing ever actually hurt in the dreamscape.)

Cipher caught movement out of the corner of their eyes, and froze the leader in place where he was trying to drag Wendy away. A small trail of blood led from the ground where she’d been lying, to the teen’s head, where the gnomes had hit her with a decent-sized rock. Cipher killed the gnome without a thought, disintegrating his form both in the dreamscape and the real world.

            With growing rage, the demon burned the eyes in their hands, shifting back into the physical plane just to watch the gnomes wake up and run again. The panicked creatures leapt over the bodies of their now dead and eyeless companions without even pausing.

            Once all the gnomes were gone, Cipher went over to Wendy, extinguishing the fire on their arms to look for a pulse. She started to stir as soon as their hand met her neck, and they drew back. They were careful to stand between her and the dead gnomes, so that she hopefully wouldn’t see the bodies before they could lead her away. Hopefully.

            “Ugh, what the heck happened?” Wendy asked, rubbing with a pained hiss at the gash just above her hairline.

            “Gnomes. They tried to kidnap you to be their queen, but we scared them off.” Cipher said cheerily. _Ours you’re ours they had no right to try and take you from us._ Cipher couldn’t really call Wendy a friend, not anymore, couldn’t say they loved her, but she was important and she couldn’t afford to be lost. She was theirs, just as Stan or Soos was; a big part of things to come who Cipher wasn’t about to change their plans around.

            “Scared them--” Wendy stopped, her eyes widening at something behind them (they could guess what it was) and then darting between their faces with increasing fear.

            “I think you might have a concussion.” They said with one mouth (the one that used to be Dipper’s) but not the other.

            “We should get you back to the Mystery Shack.” Their second mouth agreed, and they almost sighed in relief at how much easier it was to speak one at a time like that when each body was close to the opposite one.

            “Did you two…did you do that?” Wendy asked them, nodding shakily toward the gnome corpses bleeding into the grass, and Cipher looked around nonchalantly, their eyes sliding over the gnomes like they weren’t even there.

            “Do what?” They asked, turning back to the teen with innocently confused expressions. Glancing between each of their faces and then back at the gnomes, Wendy shook her head, looking a bit green around the gills, so to speak. She sat up and turned away from the tiny corpses, and Cipher went to either side of her, taking her hands in their own and pulling her up so she’d stand. “Come on, we should get you out of here.”

            Wendy didn’t look back until the three of them were out of the woods.


	2. Chapter 2

            Looking up when she heard someone knock on the open door of her hospital room, Wendy laughed a little bit when she saw Soos standing there with a small box of donuts from the shop down the street.

            “Man, those had better all be for me, because I am starving.” She said as she sat up, and he grinned, moving to sit next to her bed. Soos handed over the donuts and looked around at the sterile white room.

            “Cozy.” He decided, and Wendy laughed again. “So when are they letting you out of here, dude? Mr. Pines is worried about you; I can tell because he keeps griping and asking how much work you’re going to miss.”

            “I should be out by tonight.” She shrugged. “The general consensus seems to be that I’m ‘not in any large danger of delayed symptoms’, but that since I was unconscious for a while, I should be under observation until the docs are totally sure I’m okay.”

            “It was pretty scary yesterday, seeing them bring you out of the woods like that.” Soos gestured to his own forehead, implicating the blood that’d been gushing down Wendy’s face the day before. “But Mr. Pines said it probably looked worse than it was. He said head wounds just bleed a lot even if they aren’t a big deal.”

            Wendy nodded and bit into a donut, her satisfied hum turning into an annoyed one when her phone buzzed from the nightstand next to her. Glancing at the screen, Soos made a similar noise when he saw Robbie’s picture on the caller ID, and he pointed to the phone, silently offering to answer it for her. Wendy shook her head and grabbed it off the nightstand.

            “Man, stop calling me. I’m fine, and you’re being creepy.” She said in lieu of a greeting.

            “How was I supposed to know that?” Robbie demanded. “This is the first time you’ve answered your phone.”

            “Yeah, because I texted everyone who was worried to say I was okay, so you didn’t have a reason to keep calling.” Wendy said, and Robbie grumbled something on the other end of the line. “What do you want, Robbie?”

            “I wanna know what the hell happened to you!” He replied. “All anyone is saying is that those weird kids supposedly found you in the woods, and I tried to get them to tell me the whole story--”

            “You talked to the twins?” Wendy interrupted, sharing a glance with Soos. Both of them were frowning, their faces creased with worry, but if you’d asked either of them whether they were worried for the twins or for Robbie neither one would’ve known.

            “Yeah, but they won’t tell me what really happened either.” Robbie said, sounding almost like he was pouting. After a long moment of silence, Wendy spoke again.

            “Why do you think something happened?” She asked, and the image of the dead gnomes in the woods, their eyes completely gone and the socket bleeding out into the ground, popped into her head unbidden. Wendy swallowed the lump in her throat and pushed it away, remembering how the twins hadn’t seen the gnomes at all, how they were probably just hallucinations caused by her head injury. _Or they’re lying to you,_ part of her brain whispered, and she pretended that wasn’t one of the more reasonable of her thoughts. _Who knows what the twins are capable of now, who knows if those even are the twins? They can’t be trusted._ Wendy blinked when Soos waved his hand in front of her face, and he pointed to the phone, from which Robbie could be heard asking if she’d hung up on him.

            “Helloooo?” He asked, sighing irritably when she didn’t respond.

            “Hey.” She replied, waving off a concerned Soos.

            “Where’d you go?” Robbie didn’t give her time to answer. “Anyway, I know something happened. You’re not the sort of person who just wanders out into the woods and ends up hitting their head on something. Did those kids attack you?”

            “No! And why do you even care?” Wendy demanded.

            “Because I _know_ that something is up with those two.” Robbie said loudly. “They’re demons or something, and no one in this stupid town will admit it!”

            Wendy found herself unable to disagree. She sighed.

            “You okay, dude?” Soos asked quietly, and Wendy nodded, trying to decide what to say to Robbie.

            “Okay, look, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you might be right.” She admitted. On the other side of the call, it sounded like something crashed, and she heard muffled cursing.

            “Wait, seriously?” Robbie asked, almost incredulously.

            “Yeah.” Wendy said quietly. “I don’t think it’s even really the twins, though. I think something replaced them, or possessed them, or something.”

            Soos, mostly to himself, mumbled something about a triangle, and Wendy remembered the page in Dipper’s journal describing the demon, Bill Cipher.

            “Whoa, what?” Robbie said, and then there were more crashing noises and swearing.

            “I think…I think the twins have been possessed by a demon named Bill Cipher.” Wendy said. Soos’ eyes widened slightly, but not in surprise. Wendy recognized the expression as fear just as she heard the twins’ voices coming from down the hall, and she hung up on Robbie, putting her phone back down on the nightstand. Looking up, she and Soos were faced with a timid-looking nurse and two grinning twelve-year-olds.

            “Wendy!” The twins exclaimed, and ran to Wendy’s side, Mabel making a pleased ‘ooo’ noise when she caught sight of the box of donuts, and for a second Wendy could almost believe everything was normal. Until she saw how calculating the kids’ eyes were, how much they were waiting to measure her reaction to them. She fixed a well-practiced smile on her face (learned from a couple years of dating and a summer and a half of customer service) and reached over to ruffle Mabel’s hair, grabbing the donuts with the other hand and offering them to the twins.

            “Soos brought these over, you guys want a couple?” She asked cheerfully, turning her grin momentarily to Soos. He managed to copy her expression before the twins’ gazes turned to him.

            “Sure.” Dipper smiled, but the edges of it were too confident to be familiar, and too sharp to be friendly. “We’re glad you’re okay, Wendy.”

            “You’re ours, you know.” Mabel said vehemently, and Wendy blinked at her. Mabel laughed, waving one hand dismissively. “Our friend, I mean. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

            “Oh.” Wendy wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say. “Thanks?”

            They grinned again.

            “You’ll always be safe with us, Red.” The twins said in unison, pulling her into a hug, and she wrapped her arms around them on instinct, hoping they didn’t notice that her hands were shaking.


End file.
